


How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful

by bodysnatch3r



Series: Dworin Week 2016 [1]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 20:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7522633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodysnatch3r/pseuds/bodysnatch3r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <strong>Day One: Secrets.</strong>
</p>
<p>“Where are we going?”</p>
<p>“It's a secret.”</p>
<p>The way the word drops from his lips like it's made of gold, and Dwalin's breath is stumbling again, chasing after Thorin's feet again, too simple for it to be coincidence, too true for it to be anything but the way things are when he is with him. Thorin turns to smile at Dwalin, all mischief and blue, and Dwalin smiles back, the muscles of his face falling into place as if they were born to smile this one single smile-- but who isn't made for happiness, after all? Whose bones weren't constructed from ground and dirt to be, when all is said and done, <em>happy</em>? Whose name isn't written in the veins of mineral and ore to find a cave to shine within, at peace?</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful

“Picture this, if you may. Picture this, I beg thee, and listen.

Find a Mother. Find her deep, find her strong, find her quiet. Find her steadfast standing still, extending miles and miles into the earth. Find her in all of our blood.

Listen, do you hear? Hear her song, her sigh, her whispering?”

Majalaggalûna Morhim stops her hands in mid-air, palms forward, wrists bent back, the quiet prayer of a body that has given itself, flesh and blood, to the throbbing rush of story. Around her, the children close their eyes and inhale, excitedly, lids squeezed shut, faces wavering an inch away from a smile (to smile right now would be nothing short of sacrilegious, and Morhim wouldn't take it lightly), hands clasped tight in their laps as they sit on the ground in front of her stool.

One of them pipes up: “I can feel it, I can feel her!” and Morhim chuckles, her hands hover in the air and the dust that's lazily floating around, and then they sweep down once more, towards the earth and the dirt, the substance their bones are made of, like ravens or clouds across sky or simply the fragments of a tale as old as time that bleeds, bit by bit, into vision in the minds of her young listeners. She makes magic, this old woman with her sightless eyes, she makes magic unlike any magic the elves or the ûdâr with their long cloaks and wide-brimmed hats could ever imagine to make, magic so deep it is as heavy as lead, as brilliantly bloody, as sacred as the metalwork their ancestors made sure to fashion their bones with, after Mahal had made them of stone. No wonder the children cling to every word she says as if she were spilling honey from her lips.

Dwalin watches her paint her worlds of wisdom from the quiet corner of the wall he's leaning against, behind the children and their ravenous gazes. His skin's been overturned, his chest's been opened: he is a dwarfling again, wide-eyed and curious, latching onto stories as ancient as darkness, as beautiful as cavern walls kissed by fireflies and starlight, which are, at the end of the day, much too much the same thing for it to go unnoticed, matter of the same thing, the same way this story, the one the majalaggalûna is so aptly describing, is similar but not identical to the one his mother used to tell, when he was small and light-blooded and she would still braid his hair. In that one, the Mother is not deep, she is as endless as the surface of the Earth, but the substance of the tale is the same: it binds them together, the body of a beautiful beast with a heart beating with the sacred possibility of knowledge, of tradition, of community, kept safe by the walls of stone around her. He watches as Dis in the front row gasps when Morhim begins speaking of the Forging, and it does not surprise him: the old woman draws the beginning of time from her basket of words with an artfulness he has not seen in a while. Behind her, much too aptly, the shadows of the fireplace spill into the air, turn her simple stories into images, her tale of meager wind and tongues into the flesh and bone of imagination.

“Enjoying the show?”

The voice behind him weighs in all the right shades of blue. He turns around and sees Thorin, hair pulled back in the braid he wears when he's neck-deep in diplomacy, his tunic's sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Dwalin signals to him to keep quiet, and quickly herds the prince out of the room, the heavy door closing behind the two of them, the wood shut on the magic inside. On the threshold, outside, the walls are simply cool and quiet-- if there is any trace of the world Majalaggalûna Morhim is creating, it is simply in the fact that they are stone, and Stone is what all of them are, stone made of rock, stone made of muscle, stone made of music.

“Shouldn't you be being a prince somewhere?” he asks, if somewhat unnerved, and Thorin chuckles, “Shouldn't you be being a guard?” his smile growing at Dwalin's growing frown, “You abandoned your post. I'm fairly sure that counts as treason.”

“You were in a _private_ meeting, my _lord_ , and the storyteller offered a much more intriguing tale than the wall opposite the one I was standing. But are you _allowed_ to be here, or did you slip out unnoticed?”

There is a pause, where Thorin's eyes burn with mischief, where the grin dances on his face but doesn't come forth, where the edges of his mouth stay smiling, but still twitch, and he extends a hand as an answer, “There's something I need to show you.”

“That's not an answer to my question.”

“Please.”

No joking commands, no ordering, just his voice and the nakedness of it. It makes whatever laughter Dwalin had stored in his chest stop still, and wait– he cannot tell if this, whatever has made Thorin's voice crack like limestone under weight, is seriousness or not, is prayer or simple jest, is delicate because it wants to be or because there is no other way for it to be. He doesn't take Thorin's hand (this is not the way they have done things, nor the way they are used to things, because for them the weight is all in the gaze) but Thorin knows Dwalin is secure enough in his answer to not have to look back as he leads him down the hallway, past the corner, and then he doesn't turn right, doesn't lead them upwards, towards the street, but turns left, deeper still.

“Where are we going?”

“It's a secret.”

The way the word drops from his lips like it's made of gold, and Dwalin's breath is stumbling again, chasing after Thorin's feet again, too simple for it to be coincidence, too true for it to be anything but the way things are when he is with him. Thorin turns to smile at Dwalin, all mischief and blue, and Dwalin smiles back, the muscles of his face falling into place as if they were born to smile this one single smile-- but who isn't made for happiness, after all? Whose bones weren't constructed from ground and dirt to be, when all is said and done, _happy_? Whose name isn't written in the veins of mineral and ore to find a cave to shine within, at peace?

The stairs, cut from stone, turn smaller still, force them to walk grazing the walls with their hands, taking ginger slow steps to make sure they don't fall. Beneath them, darkness, unknown, terrible. Above them, eternity enclosed in the comfort of knowing there is a mountain keeping them safe. Around them, the slow, monotonous hum of the miners singing to accompany their work, the sound rushing through the tunnels like an overflowing stream.

“Shouldn't you be by your grandfather and father's side?”

“They won't miss me for an hour, Dwalin.”

The stairs end, at a certain point, like all stairs leading to secrets do (Dwalin figures there must be a story about that, too, locked away in someone's mind, a story about secret doors, and stairways only keen eyes can find, a story about treasures hidden under lock and key for centuries), and become a simple path that brings the two down deeper still. Thorin lights a lamp Dwalin didn't notice he'd brought with him, a small ornate thing. The guardsman chuckles, the prince smiles in reply.

“What's so funny?”

“If you were anyone else, Thorin, I'd start to suspect an ambush.”

“But I am _not_ anyone else, so be _patient_.”

He says it turning on himself, back towards the path, facing Dwalin as he walks backwards before he turns again, and there's laughter again, the deepest of sounds, from his chest and his ribs and his heart, laughter that takes Dwalin's hand and leads him, shows him the way. He might not be able to find it back, but it matters little, when the one he's walking with is Thorin, quick steps and beauty that is quicker.

Thorin turns one final corner, and then he stills. Behind him, Dwalin reaches him, glad to have his curiosity satiated, and then, and _then_ \--

And then the Stone breaks in two, divided, an arch of eyes that curves before them into the bare bones of the entrance of a cave, a threshold between worlds, a threshold between what is, what _is_ , their malleable Stone of bodies, and what _was_ , before the Forging, before the Awakening, this solid body of Stone, these bones of mountain. Thorin turns to him again, all eternity in a smile, all beauty, all mischief, and then nudges with his head, and steps through, past the threshold, wading into light. Into light? Into light, the translucent shine a thing Dwalin did not expect.

“Glowworms.”

He breathes it out beneath his breath, as low as any whisper Morhim's pupils may have uttered when enraptured by her tales, with their same reverence, their same wonder, their same respect, their same knowledge of being before a very facet of the universe, a fracture in the fabric of what's real that leaks through with the essence of dreams, of stars, of blood and history. The cave Thorin's led him to is this, and so much more. He turns to look at the prince, and catches the curve of his neck, the dip of his hair, the blue of bioluminescence reflected in the blue of his eyes. He finds him beautiful. He finds him holy.

“How did you--”

“I told you. It's a secret.”

Thorin's whispering, too, and the smile he gifts Dwalin's lost all mischief, shed its teasing shell in favor of warmth that it wears so much differently, so much better suited for such delicate light, a kiss of holiness that finds his jawline, his cheekbones, his forehead.

“Between what? Between you an'the Mountain?”

The crinkles around Thorin's eyes in reply tell Dwalin that yes, this is what it is, this light that takes their hands and turns them into diamonds, into azurite, into gold, that brings their flesh back to what it was always made to be, precious gem, built to endure, the silver of Thorin's rings glinting with blue, the clatter of Dwalin's weapons strapped to his body bouncing of the walls like ceremonial bells.

“Come,” the prince says, and this time brushes the tips of his right fingers against the back of Dwalin's left palm, leads him deeper still through a tight passage, past the stalagmites and stalactites, past the veins of shine that pulsate like blood. Dwalin watches him move for a moment, and then follows him along the narrow path, the walls so close his shoulders brush against them as they walk, until they flare again, open wide once more, welcoming and quiet, the caves connected like the chambers of a heart.

In this one, there is a lake.

The light from above breaks the surface of the lake like rain upon a puddle, only the water does not ripple but reflect, light chasing light along the ridges and dips and curves of stone.

“How did you find it?”

“I explore, when it's late and I cannot sleep. One day I found them.”

“Both of them?”

He shakes his head, hair flowing from side to side briefly, “No. This one I found afterwards.”

A pause, where he weighs his options, decides whether it is time to bare himself for good. It is always such a hard thing to do, with his heart so tied tight underneath his ribs.

“I come here to think. It is quiet enough.”

Dwalin crouches on the banks of the lake, Thorin watches him do so.

“It's beautiful.”

Dwalin does not dare touch the surface of the lake, does not dare press his hand to the perfect glass of the surface, does not dare disturb the balance. There are _few_ words, small words, pointless words that he may try to use to tell this, to describe this, to solidify it, from image to creature of reality, acknowledged by the tongue of another, but all of them seem fallible, much too pointless, much too mundane. He stands up again, turns towards Thorin, this bouncing back and forth of bodies ever since they started this slow descent to sanctity, these gazes that chase each other, that reach for each other, these smiles and jokes and minds, stretching across this darkness that knows it is darkness and screams itself to sleep in the millions of chambers it runs through. Thorin watches him, Thorin waits to see what he will say, more than _it's beautiful_ , if he will understand, in full, the weight of this secret he's shared.

This is not just a secret, not just a whisper to share between ears and tongue--

This is a gift to give only to hands he knows will never let him fall, this breath of life within the Stone, this beauty burned in blue.

How big, how blue, how _beautiful_ to know one has a heart wide enough to give.

“It's beautiful,” Dwalin repeats. The tales their people tell they keep close to their hearts: they are a people made of Stone, of Mother earth and Father rock, with words that make their world as bright as any unfound cave, secret and safe, the world outside so simply unable to _comprehend_ , that world of elves and men and light that is not made from their own hands. Beneath the depth and darkness of the earth, a heart passes from hand to hand. A secret heart, a quiet heart, a heart seared with a promise of burning.

For now, it simply shines.

 


End file.
